Late for the Sky
by ibshafer
Summary: With their enemies on Earth finally eliminated, Max, Isabel and Michael prepare to head back home, but Max can't leave without seeing Liz one more time. Future Fic AU This story was written between seasons 1 and 2, before the Skins, before Tess's betrayal
1. Chapter 1

Title: Late for the Sky  
Chapter: 1/4  
Author: ibshafer  
Category: Max/Liz (with some great Michael/Maria thrown in!)  
Rating: R (light)  
Summary: Heavy AU future fic. This story was written between seasons 1  
and 2, before the Skins, before Tess's betrayal, before Michael and Isabel  
lost respect for Max. It was written with Liz's sacrifice -- Max's destiny  
over her own happiness -- in mind. Most of the characters are involved  
(including Friggin' Eddie!), but I am a Dreamer first and foremost. . .  
Though not originally intended, the story has a pretty strong Candy  
storyline, as well. Maria just wouldn't be ignored or down played. g  
Author's Note: This story appeared in the first issue of the Roswell  
fanzine, Late for the Sky. © 2000 MadSeasonPress

_Now the words had all been spoken  
And somehow the feeling still wasn't right  
And still we continued on through the night  
Tracing our steps from the beginning  
Until they vanished into the air  
Trying to understand  
How our lives had lead us there _

Looking hard into your eyes  
There was nobody I'd ever known  
Such an empty surprise  
To feel so alone  
— Jackson Browne, Late for the Sky

The end came, not with a bang, not with a whimper, but with the tortured sound of tires squealing on wet pavement and the frantic tattoo of a semi's horn cutting the silence of the New Mexican night. . .

Max was heading back from covering a brush fire just south of Albuquerque, when the garbled message from Isabel came in over the Cherokee's on-board computer. He winced at the transmission noise and made a mental note to have the techs at the reservation lab take another look at it. The unit was still pretty buggy and at this point in the Confrontation, he needed to be able to depend on his communications system more than ever.

It had been ten years since they'd gone into hiding. Ten years since their first interactions with the Others. And while they knew Max and his people were in New Mexico, they couldn't get a bead on _where_.

That anonymity was due, in no small part, to the work of the team they'd assembled. He, Isabel and Michael owed the Apache a rather large debt of gratitude.

Max heard his stomach growl, instantly sorry he'd passed by that roadside stand outside of Mesa twenty minutes ago. Popping a piece of gum in his mouth to stave off the pangs, he stifled a yawn.

_Man, am I tired. _

Forcing his eyes open wider, he cranked down the window in the ancient 4x4, hoping the blast of cool night air would revive him. He massaged his forehead with a free hand, sparing a few moments to reflect on the challenge of his life.

The whole dual-existence thing had worn thin years ago. _Working. Fighting. _If he could have gotten his editor to take him off this fire story or quit his job entirely, he would have.

Before Nasedo had been killed (in the end, it turned out he _could _die), he'd managed to stockpile a fair amount of money for them. It hadn't lasted long, but at least it had helped them establish their base on the Mesaliko. Max's press pass had gained him access to all sorts of useful information and spared him from having to explain his interest. Somehow he'd managed these past 10 years _(God, was it 10 years already?)_ to hold down a job _and_ fight for his very life.

They _all_ had.

They'd had no choice.

And it would all be over soon. One way or the other.

A signal from the com let him know when the decryption was done. Punching up the translate filter, he waited for the audio, then froze when it came through.

_"—get there as soon as you can, Max!" _Isabel's normally smooth tones were stressed, not just from the connection. ". . ._I tried to stop him --- --- know how he is --- --- took off before --- could get a message to you." _

A map popped up on the tiny monitor, showing a flashing marker, outside of Roswell. He was just north of town now, heading south on 285.

Flooring the accelerator, Max one-hand-typed a quick note back to Isabel telling her he'd meet her there in thirty minutes. . .

Less than half an hour later, he hit traffic piling up on Route 285. Sitting behind a dump truck with bad exhaust, Max sat chewing the cuticles of his left hand and trying not to panic. Something felt bad here. In the pit of his stomach, something felt very, very bad. . .

He was about to take a walk up ahead to see what the delay was, when he saw Isabel run past him on the shoulder.

"Izzy!" he called out the window after her, but she was too far ahead and didn't hear him. Taking a second to grab his press pass, he jumped from the truck and followed the line of cars south. Once away from the noise of the idling dump truck, he could hear the troopers' radios. Then the telltale flashing blue lights came into view and the stone cold feeling went from bad to worse.

_It's just an accident,_ he told himself, at a full-out run now. _People have accidents all the time. It doesn't mean it's him. _

Nearer to the accident scene, he got glimpses, through the rescue workers and their machinery, of the drama unfolding ahead—glimpses that told him _nobody_ was walking away from this one.

The ache in his belly suddenly became more tangible, doubling him over abruptly. It traveled on to his head where it threatened to explode his skull.

_Shit. Shit. Shit. . . This is not good. . . _The throbbing in his head had him on his knees, one hand out to steady himself. _It could be him. . . He would have been here by now. He could be— _

The pain was like a huge, hungry animal, all teeth and hot breath. It grabbed him around the middle, holding him in a death grip. In his mind's eye, he saw the blood pouring to the ground, saw his insides now outside. Saw it all over. . .

With his eyes screwed shut against the agony, he didn't see the State Trooper until he was at his side.

"Hey, buddy, you all right? You catch some exhaust?"

There was a hand on his shoulder now and it seemed to draw him back from the brink of whatever it was, forcing the beast to unclamp its jaws and step away. The throbbing began to ease up, as if the animal had changed its mind about its meal and was moving back down the road, towards the accident and the noise and the obvious death there.

When Max opened his eyes it was to a familiar face regarding him intently, recognition blooming there almost instantly.

"Ken Clark! You covering this territory again?" the trooper said, stooping to help him up. "You all _right_? What happened?"

"Just a migraine," Max mumbled, forcing a pained smile onto his face and still massaging his temple. The pseudonym was so deeply ingrained that he hadn't even flinched. "Wayne Roscoe," he said with as much normalcy as he could muster, offering his free hand to the man. "Haven't seen you in a while. How are you?"

The trooper grimaced. "Had _better _nights, let me tell you." He nodded behind him to the accident scene. "Not a pretty sight back there."

"Any ID yet on the victims?" Max asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. To support the reporter-on-the-beat ruse, he fished out his mini-recorder and switched it on.

Roscoe shook his head. "Not yet . . . I think it's gonna take dentals, though, if you ask me. The fire was pretty hot. That Mercedes ain't nothin' but slag now. . ."

Max blinked in surprise, covered quickly. "Did you say it was a Mercedes?"

"Yup. Big mother, too. Diesel SUV, M series. Nice ride." He shrugged. "Didn't stand a chance against that semi, though." Roscoe's radio sparked to life. He answered it briefly in clipped tones, then excused himself to return to the accident site.

Max shivered, pulling his jacket closer around him.

_A Mercedes 400 ML. _

Hell, lots of people drove Mercedes. Not so many of them out here in the New Mexican wilderness, but people with money were always passing through on their way to other places. Reno. Las Vegas. Los Angeles.

_Still, a Mercedes SUV. _

There had been reports over the last few weeks of Marcus and his three aids getting closer to them. Trying to pick up their "scent." In a black Mercedes SUV. _Searching. . . . _And then Michael had run off after they'd gotten word tonight. Max knew that everyone in the com center would have tried to convince him to wait. Wait until they could all be together. To face them together.

_They were stronger together. _

While the pain in his head had miraculously disappeared, the cold hard feeling in his gut was back. Michael had been here. He was sure of it. Was he _here _when it happened? Was he. . .

He looked up and saw Isabel frantically hanging back in the crowd of on-lookers, clearly in agony and he took off running, at her side in seconds. "Iz," he whispered as she fell into his arms.

She clung to him, distraught, breathless. "He wouldn't listen to me! I kept telling him this was just what Marcus wanted. To hit us when we were apart. When you weren't here." She wiped at her face, at the tears already streaking her cheeks. "He was convinced they were heading straight for us. To the rez. And he said he could stop them." She spared a look over her shoulder to the fire, still burning, barely under control. Softly, she swore, something Max had noticed she'd learned to do since this had all begun. "I can't see _anything _in there. . . I can't see if his bike is. . . . If it's. . ." She nodded at Roscoe. "Did Wayne mention a . . . a motorcycle involved in the accident?"

"No, he didn't." He squeezed her arm. "Stay here. I'll go ask—"

"Wait! What's that on the shoulder?" She was pointing now, up on her toes, trying to see around the chaos. "Is that a Harley?"

But Max was already gone. And she wasn't far behind.

They found Michael sitting on the pavement next to his bike, rocking back and forth slowly as he watched the flames, his gaze fixed and intent.

"Michael?" Max whispered, shaking him gently when he got no response. He knelt at Michael's side. "_Michael? _What happened here? Was it. . ."

"It's all over, Maxwell," Michael said, his voice so soft they could barely hear him.

Max shot a glance to Isabel, whose eyes widened as she nodded.

"Didn't you feel it? Don't you know?" Michael was smiling now, but his eyes never left the fire. "It's done. It's _over_. . ." He finally looked away from the wreckage. "You know, don't you?" He turned to Isabel. "Izzy? I saw you—it almost knocked you to the ground."

Isabel was nodding. "_The pain_. . ." she whispered.

In shock, Max dropped to the shoulder beside Michael, his expression blank. "I. . . I thought it was. . . I thought it was _you_."

Michael smiled now, with a growing ease. "You haven't been there for as many of them as I have. That's what it feels like when _they_ die. The energy sticks around for a lot longer, too. Like it can't leave until it hits everyone." He shivered, perhaps remembering something. Max suspected he was thinking about Tess. "We . . . we feel _different_. Bad, but not _as_. . ."

"Michael, what happened here?" Isabel was studying his face intently. "Did you . . . _did_ you?" She motioned with her head towards the wreckage.

"Didn't have to," Michael said, softly. "That semi beat me to it. . ." His smile grew faintly ironic. "Sort of anti-climatic, don't you think?"

Max blinked at the chaos, seeing the vain efforts of the fire fighters, knowing that not even _dentals_ would help identify what would be left when the fire was all out.

The information refused to sink in. This war they had been fighting had begun before any of them had been born—this time anyway. It had been raging for so long, it was like a thing that would always just Be, a thing they'd never really believed would ever end. And now it had.

With no one left to fight there would be no war. At least, not here on Earth. . .

Inside, in that place in his gut where the beast had grabbed him, Max knew that it was true. He closed his eyes and searched elsewhere—for the subtle vibrations that set them and their enemies apart from the rest of Earth's population. He felt only Isabel's warmth and Michael's barely contained energy. Nothing more.

He looked to his sister and to his friend—to his _family—_and he knew the barely registering understanding he saw there echoed his own. At the corners of mouths and eyes he could see a hint of the relief starting to blossom. Grabbing the nearest hand (Michael's) and giving it a knowing squeeze, he watched that ease begin to grow. He caught his sister's eye, holding her gaze and smiling. Nodded in understanding.

It _was_ over.

Eddie and the others were waiting when they returned to the reservation. A bonfire was lit in the main compound and drums beat out an insistent song of celebration. Had River Dog still been with them, he would no doubt have been leading a chant in the sweat lodge. After so many years of fighting and hardship, the relief and the joy they all now felt was a palpable thing, like fragrant smoke drifting through the cool night air.

Breathless from the dance, Eddie met them as they drove up. "You're sure of this?" he asked, and when Isabel nodded, he grabbed her in a fierce hug and spun her around the parking lot.

Max smiled at the freedom in her laughter. It was a sound he hadn't heard since they'd been children. Before realization and reality had set in. Before she'd lost Alex to the Confrontation. And their parents. Before so many other painful and devastating things had happened.

He let his gaze linger until Eddie carried his sister into the shadows, then he headed towards camp.

Allowing himself to be drawn into the circle of celebrants, Max exchanged smiles and relieved hugs with everyone around him. These people had taken them in, made this fight their own and, in the end, become family. He, Isabel and Michael owed the tribe a debt that could never be repaid.

Through the haze of smoke, Max could just see Michael, sitting outside the crush of dancers, staring intently into the burning column of logs and scrap wood, a look of slowly dawning wonder on his face. He was only alone for a moment, though, before a pack of his young art students, flushed and breathless, rushed over and dragged him, only mildly resisting, back into the celebration, each holding a hand or a shirt tail. Michael hefted the smallest of them onto his shoulder while another attached himself to Michael's leg.

Max watched in amusement as the Michael/kid creature made its lumbering way into the circle, watched the joy and abandon reflected in Michael's face and too, saw the genuine warmth and relief he shared openly with the tribe—all brought to wondrous, glowing life by the dancing flames.

So many changes in Michael.

So many changes in them _all. . ._

The celebration at his back, Max found his way to an empty picnic table and sat silently, trying to take it all in.

Marcus and his aides were _dead_. He, Isabel and Michael had felt them die. Felt it and understood it, both in a way no human being could. The shift in energy, the painful release, the irreversible movement of spirit from earth to sky. _Like the soul's passage to heaven,_ Max mused, feeling both the influence of his Apache brethren and his Christian upbringing.

_More like its banishment to Hell. . . _

His people had no concept of Heaven and Hell, at least not as Nasedo had taught it, but Max was as much human as he was alien and his morality worked from human models of right and wrong, sin and retribution. If there was a controlling Being in this Universe, if there was _any _justice at all—Marcus and his minions were in Hell right now. For what they'd done to his people. For the deaths, both human and alien, they'd brought about here on Earth.

_May they roast in Hell. _

_May they return to the Sun. _

_Amen. _

With that "return," the Confrontation was over.

They'd come to call it that early on, when it became apparent that these others had no interest in talk or peace or of allowing them their lives here. The Others' only purpose was to search them out and destroy them. And so he, Isabel, Michael and Tess, as unprepared as they'd been in the beginning, had had no other choice but to do the same. With Nasedo's help, and later, the help of the Apache on the Mesaliko, they'd grown stronger and smarter and sadly, more and more skilled at this business of war.

Not without their losses, though. _Not without their deaths. _

It had begun nearly ten years ago, with a singular and devastating event that had woken them from the false sense of security their presumed anonymity had given them.

It had begun, and Max noted the irony here, with a fire. . .

He and Isabel were attending NMU, both studying journalism; he print, she photo. A press pass and a nom de plume. Too open an invitation to pass up, Max said. Legitimate and justifiable reason for asking questions. For traveling around the country. For following leads. For, hopefully, gathering information that would help them find the Others.

Home on Spring Break, they'd spent a desolate evening at the Crashdown with Alex, who had tried to organize a sort of reunion. Sadly, things had not gone as planned and definitely not as Max had hoped; it had just been the three of them. Michael, working over Break, was still in Colorado. Liz was home, but not feeling well and Maria had stayed upstairs to take care of her. They'd eaten a half-hearted meal, Max had wasted his time with Mr. Parker and made a pointless trip to Liz's balcony, and then they'd left.

They didn't hear the sirens until they got closer to home. And when they turned onto their street and saw the fire engines and ambulances, there was no question in either's mind where the fire was.

There _were _no coincidences in their lives.

Frantic, they rushed the road block, desperate to find their parents alive and well and standing _outside_ watching the blaze that was consuming their home. The thick smoke, the night's darkness, and the crush of machinery and men obscured their view of the blaze, but they knew what lay beyond that hellish, almost purple glow; the one place that had truly been home to them and the man and woman who had stepped forward to become the only parents they had ever known.

Once Isabel spotted the Lincoln County Coroner's van, their desperation to find their parents, to find them _alive_, became extreme. About to make a dash through an opening line of firefighters, they were stopped by Jim Valenti who seemed just as frantic to stop them from getting any nearer the scene.

Not to shield them from the sight, devastating though it was.

To shield them from being _seen_.

Jim had managed to drag them toward his truck and something about the intensity in his eyes, and a pain on his face that seemed to echo their own, made them get inside and listen to what he had to say. That blaze had been set to kill _them, _he said, and for them to get away safely, for them to survive to fight another day, they must _remain _"dead."

Valenti had gone on to explain how he'd arrived on the scene first, how he'd noticed a strangeness to the blaze—the way it seemed to have consumed only one room, at first anyway, leaving the rest of the house untouched. There was something odd about the fire itself. Brighter than he'd ever seen. And the _color _of it; blueish red. An eery shade of purple. The firefighters hadn't noticed, they were too busy trying to put it out, but to Jim Valenti, it sent up all sorts of warning flags.

It wasn't _natural_. . .

Knowing what he knew, it took him only moments to put the pieces together. He saw the Jeep in the driveway and his heart sank. The Others had _found _Max and Isabel; learned their true identities. They'd located the house the two lived in and known they'd be home on Spring Break. Seeing Max's Jeep in the driveway and believing that meant he and Isabel were in the house, they'd set the blaze thinking to kill them in one.

And until Jim had seen them desperately trying to break through the line of firefighters, he'd believed they'd succeeded. Because he was ignorant of the same single fact that the Others had been. They had _not_ seen the dead starter in the Jeep. The one that had forced Max and Isabel to take their mother's car into town.

Max fought back a familiar wave of guilt at the memory of another fire, a kitchen fire, and of his mother begging him to tell her something, _anything_, because on some level she'd _known. _She'd known there was something unusual and possibly frightening about her quiet, sensitive son. And he'd refused her. Begged _her _to understand his silence. Promised that it wasn't anything bad. Then he'd gone back to Isabel and stuck to his conviction that their parents remain in the dark. He'd comforted her and reassured himself that this silence was for the best. That it was safer for _all_ of them if their parents never knew the truth.

And now they were dead.

Something they'd known _nothing _about had killed them. Something he and Isabel might have been able to protect them from if they'd had the foresight. If they'd just _trusted _their parents to love them enough. If only they'd believed in the reality of the threat. _If only. . . _

That day began a lifetime of "_if only's."_

Like Tess. Max had failed her, too.

_Oh, God, Tess. I'm so sorry. . . _

On nights when he couldn't sleep, hers was often the story that tortured him.

She'd come to them lost, her only wishes to find a place to belong and to reclaim what she believed was already hers; his love. His _soul. _When she found him, though, his soul already belonged to Liz. It was irrevocably, achingly, perhaps disastrously melded to hers. _To Liz._ Try though Tess might, in word and deed, to remind him of their former selves, their former claims to one another, she could not change what had already been changed inside of him. He simply _belonged _to someone else now. Even when Liz stepped aside, in the name of his destiny, his devotion to her would never waver. Even as the years passed.

Tess never gave up trying to prove, to remind, to convince him she was all that he needed. And when the enemy was close at hand and she saw her chance at last, she set off to fight alone, to protect the people she'd come to love—to perform an act meant to show, once and for all, her true value. An act that would make him realize and finally understand her love for him. To make him love _her_. To make them _all _love her. But she failed.

The Others had killed _her_, instead. Michael, who had followed her to Carlsbad where the Others were camping, saw to it they paid for her death.

In all else, though, she had succeeded

He knew her value. Had, in fact, always known it. Resourceful and dedicated, her single-minded devotion to their fight, unencumbered by earthly ties, made her the perfect warrior. Her training by Nasedo, ten years greater than theirs, showed her command of her powers to be smooth and intuitive.

And he did know that she loved him. Though he fought that love and fought against the predetermination of it, the blind and mindless acceptance that was expected of him, he did understand it. And he did love her—as a member of his team, as a member of his family—which was not as she wanted.

Her presence _was_, through no fault of her own, a reminder of what his life could not be. Of what, of _whom_, he could not have.

_Liz. . . _

And though he knew it was futile and he'd tried to fight it, to section her away in a dusty part of his memory, he had no doubt that the void in his heart and his tacit and reluctant acceptance of _why, _colored his every interaction with Tess.

She died believing her life had somehow robbed him of his.

Michael had said he'd held her as she'd passed on. He heard her last confessions of love and regret and he made promises to let her go that night. To make no attempt at rebirth, as would have been their custom. Tess had begged Michael not to consign her to another life without Max's love. She begged him to let it _end_.

Michael had rocked her gently as her life had ebbed from this existence. After she'd died, after the gut-wrenching pain that marked her passing had released its hold on him, he had dug a hole in the hard New Mexican soil, lowered her gently into it, and after saying Grace, the only prayer he knew, he covered her with dirt.

It was several days before Michael returned to the reservation and even more before he related all that had happened. Max and Isabel had been so relieved to see him ride into the compound, dusty from the highway and far more quiet than usual, they'd let him go without pressing him too hard. He'd radioed from the road that Tess was gone. The rest would come soon, in endless sessions around similar fires, the broad expanse of the universe dark and shimmering above them. . .

That was over eight years ago and the memory and the pain had neither dimmed nor dulled for any of them. That bitter chapter of their lives was ending and a new one was about to begin. Would it be any less difficult? What was there left for them to sacrifice?

From his picnic table vantage point, Max searched out Michael, dancing breathlessly with a group of young men. It took him a moment longer to spot Isabel. In spite of the drums' insistent rhythms, she and Eddie were holding each other close, moving gently in a slow dance. Even from this distance, Max could see what they were feeling written in their body language. Their eyes were locked together and Eddie's hands were woven into Isabel's hair. He knew exactly what they were doing.

They were memorizing each other's faces.

For the day was coming. Very soon. The day when he, Michael and Isabel would be leaving.

There was still a war to be fought.

At home.

_- tbc…_


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Late for the Sky  
Chapter: 2/4  
Author: ibshafer  
Category: Max/Liz (with some great Michael/Maria thrown in!)  
Rating: R (light)  
Summary: Heavy AU future fic. This story was written between seasons 1  
and 2, before the Skins, before Tess's betrayal, before Michael and Isabel  
lost respect for Max. It was written with Liz's sacrifice -- Max's destiny  
over her own happiness -- in mind. Most of the characters are involved  
(including Friggin' Eddie!), but I am a Dreamer first and foremost. . .  
Though not originally intended, the story has a pretty strong Candy  
storyline, as well. Maria just wouldn't be ignored or down played. g  
Author's Note: This story appeared in the first issue of the Roswell  
fanzine, Late for the Sky. © 2000 MadSeasonPress

Outside, the dance continued. Once the tribe had reason to celebrate, they usually didn't stop until the dawn.

Isabel had loaded a CD into the deck, one of Jackson Browne's earlier albums, a fondness for which she'd absorbed from Eddie, but after the last strains of "Late for the Sky" had played out, the drums' rhythmic insistence once again filled the room.

Which was fine with Michael. The beat had found its way into his blood, breathed life back into his limbs, and made a start at cleansing away the poisonous psychic aftertaste the passing of Marcus and his goons had left in his head.  
Exhausted, but charged, the three had each found their way back to the little house they shared. They spent the remainder of the night discussing the preparations for their departure.

Before he'd been killed, Nasedo, as Pierce, had been able to gain access to a secret hanger at Area 51. Deep below the desert, far from the prying eyes of man and military, a ship now lay waiting to return them home.

"So, then you're sure those systems are working now?" Max asked quietly, rubbing at what looked like a sore spot on his neck.  
Michael watched him and sighed, knowing full well he was ticking items off that little mental list he always had going.

_"Maxwell," _he said gently, his lips turned in a smile. "Give it a rest, already. The support systems are fine. And if they're not, Randy and I will have them up and running in plenty of time." He slid off his boots, wincing as he uncramped his toes. "Are you still set on the date? January something-or-other, right?"

Max's answering half-grin was gratifying. Only half, but he'd take what he could get.

_Man, he was wound tight tonight. Tonight of all nights he should be_ loose.

"The 20th, yeah." Max nodded to Isabel, dozing lightly against his shoulder. "Iz's research turned up that week as the strongest, in terms of planetary alignments and gravitational forces and. . ." He rubbed at his temple, as though chasing down a thought. ". . .and other . . . other things. . ."

Michael let out a low hoot. "_Now _who's Mr. Imprecise?"

Max shrugged, which roused the sleeping Isabel. "Sorry, Izzy," he soothed as she sat up with a long stretch.

"S'Okay. I was up, anyway." Reaching over, she put her arms around her brother, then kissed him lightly on the cheek. "The _'other things,'_ Max,say that the sun spot activity expected for that week ought to create 'ghost' blips all over the radar. We should be able to move right out of the atmosphere without being noticed. And when the thrusters kick in, well . . . we won't be around long enough for anyone to track," she finished with a grin. "Our technology kicks _butt_."

Michael laughed softly at the tone of pride in her voice.

She smiled in return and he caught the warmth in her eyes, at once reminded how glad he was they'd regained their sibling closeness after that failed attempt to comply with the dictates of their destiny. He didn't care what _anyone's _mother said—he and Isabel were brother and sister. _End of fairy story. _

Max rose from the couch and stretched his legs, suddenly looking both exhausted, which was understandable, and unsure of himself, which was not. "Why don't we . . . um, pick this up in the morning, okay?" His _voice _was even hesitant. Michael knew what was up, what was on Max's mind, and what he was about to do. He wished he could stop him. Or help him. Or _something._

Instead Michael just watched him hug his sister, watched him hold on a little longer and a little tighter than might have been necessary, offered his own hand to be shaken, felt the same reticence in Max's hand clasp, and then watched as the man retreated to his quarters.

After Max had gone, Michael glanced over at Isabel to see tears wet on her face.

"Iz, how can you let him do that? Every night."

"He's a grown man, Michael," she said, grabbing a tissue from the box on the table. "He makes his _own _decisions."

"He's _killing _himself, you know that?"

Michael was instantly sorry he'd said it as a fresh wave began to roll down her cheeks.

"_C'mere_," he whispered, opening his arms to her. She moved across the couch to nestle against him. "I'm sorry," he whispered, kissing the top of her head.

She nodded and he could feel her hair brushing his chin as she did.

"I'm sorry I showed him how, Michael. I thought he could handle it." She shuddered. "I just thought if he could _see_, he could let _go_. I didn't think it would go on for so long. I didn't think. . ."

"I know you didn't, Izzy," he said as he rocked her. "I don't know how to stop him either. It's not like he'd listen to either one of us, anyway."

This wasn't the first night they'd had this conversation. Michael knew it wouldn't be the last. At least not until January 20th. He hated watching Max eat himself up over things he couldn't change. And their time on Earth was a done deal. They would soon be gone.

They each had their regrets, they each had names and faces that haunted them in their sleep, but torturing themselves wouldn't change the inevitable. Three months from now, they would pack up their things and go home. And no amount of wishing would change the way things were.

For them or anyone else. . .

Max stripped out of his clothes, grabbed a pair of shorts from the top drawer of his dresser, fiddled with his watch for a moment, then climbed into bed. There was a book on the night stand, one he'd utterly failed to get into and he made another half-hearted attempt before tossing it onto the bed next to him with a heavy sigh.

He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to know any more than he already did.

He just couldn't help himself.

From the drawer in the night stand, he pulled out an old, worn copy of Stranger in a Strange Land, carefully spreading its dog-eared pages until he'd found what he was looking for.

He studied the photo in his hands as if somehow expecting it to look different than it had every night for the past year. As though it would speak to him and tell him the thing he most needed to hear. But it didn't. It just stared sadly back at him.

There was a look in those eyes that made his heart clutch in his chest every time he saw it. It'd been a happy picture when he'd taken it, twelve years ago. Now all it did was torment him.

With a sigh of resignation, he ran a finger lightly over the photo, watched as Liz's features rippled like water in response, then let his head fall back onto the pillow. . .

He found himself amidst the chaos of a busy hospital emergency room. Outside, the sirens of emergency vehicles wailed a constant accompaniment to the screaming children, ringing phones and the clipped chatter of the doctors and nurses struggling to get the obvious crisis under control.

Pulling a pair of scrubs from a nearby cart, Max slipped into them, pausing for the briefest second when he realized how familiar they felt. He ignored the sudden pounding in his chest, at the phantom pain that flared to life over his breast bone _(after all this time), _and fixed his eyes on a nearby door.

He'd been here before. He knew what was about to happen.

As if on cue, a muted rhythmic tone sounded from behind it, followed by a groggy female voice muttering,

". . . _I'm up! I'm up!_"

Max backed out of the way and behind a cart of used linens just as the door swung open and a small figure emerged, trying to hold a stethoscope while shrugging back into a white lab coat.

_Liz. . . _

As many times as he'd done this—stolen into her dreams, witnessed her nightmares—he would never get used to seeing her this way. Tired. Gaunt. _Pale. . . _The Liz _he_ knew, a million years ago, had been vibrant and full of life, not jaded from it. Not worn down by it. Not struggling to make it _through _it.

He barely had time to register the changes in her, or rather the changes in her perception of herself, before she was off and down the hall at a run.

"_Parker!_" called a commanding voice from behind the main desk. "Pyromaniac in a school yard. Check the kid in Exam 5. Burns and a chest wound."

"On it!" She took off down the hall.

Keeping a good twenty feet behind her, he slipped through the exam room door only seconds after she did. . . and found himself, not in a hospital ward, but on a playground.

Where were they? Liz's hospital dreams always took place there, as she struggled in vain to save a life, reliving the day's failures again and again. Torturing herself. In the ER. In the lab. On the ward. But not here on a playground.

A_ familiar _playground. . .

It took him a moment to get acclimated and then he was spinning to find the bus, just in time to see the young version of himself step down onto the pavement, his six year old sister Isabel right behind him.

_How odd that you would dream this,_ he thought. Had she _seen_ the images in him? If so, she'd never said.

Yet there he was, all eyes and fear and . . . yes, there shewas, too, the young Liz, happy and laughing with her friends, a special light dancing in her eyes—even then.

For a moment, his present self mirrored his younger self as he stared transfixed at this girl who would, for a short time, become his entire life. Something in her, the joy in her voice, the care she took with her friends, spoke to him. _Resonated _for him. Even at this early age, she was already the person she was to become. He'd known it _then_. He could see it _now_.

Max shuddered, his heart beating quicker. This was the part that hurt the most, the point in her dreams when the realization fell in on him. It felt like life, expanding and spinning in his chest, but it hurt, too. It hurt like death.

_He loved her. _

The years had not dulled that, just found another place for it to rest in his memory. As hopeless as it was, as beyond it as he should have been, he _still _loved her.

The dream Liz was wandering the crowded playground now, confused, searching for the "case" she was supposed to be working on. The young burn victim. His eyes roamed to schoolyard, as if to help her. There was a sharp cry to his right and when he turned, the present Liz was kneeling over a child's body.

_His _body.

_Why are you dreaming this, Liz?_ he thought.

Seeing himself so young and so defenseless . . . it was hard not to feel fear. The way she was working over him, though—a doctor and a patient; he stared at her in wonder and held his breath. Her hands, sure of themselves, moved quickly as she checked his injuries and his vital signs. Livid, red burns covered his arms and face, and he could see more in the spots where his clothing had been burned away. There didn't seem to be much blood, but somehow he could tell she thought she was _losing _him. Her professional calm was holding, but it wouldn't be long before it broke down. He could see the desperation at the edges of her eyes, see the color of it splashed on her cheeks and the way her breath was quickening.

_She was scared. _

As she worked over his motionless body, tears began to stream down her sweet face. "Not again!" she was whispering. "I can do this. I can stop this from happening!"

Though he knew it was dangerous, he couldn't stay away. He was drawn closer to this scene in spite of his fear she would spot him, of the confusion it would cause. What would happen if she "recognized" him?

"_Max_," she exclaimed, oblivious to his advance. "_Don't_. . . You can't die. You _can't_." She worked over him furiously, swabbing at the gash in his chest. It seemed to grow deeper as he watched. The blood was flowing red, soaking his shirt, pooling on the ground beneath him.

Max had to fight the nausea as the realization hit him. He _knew _that wound. Had it bled this much the fateful night that Pierce had ordered his "surgeons" to cut him? He felt a ghost pain flair to life over his sternum and refocused on Liz instead of giving in to it.

Liz was frantic now, all common procedure seeming to have failed. She sat back on her heels for a moment, breathing heavily, then with a soft cry, she leaned forward again, pulled some of the soaked gauze away and placed her hand over the injury in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.

"Come on, Max," she whispered, teeth grit. _"Please. . ." _

The blood continued to flow, though, and his tiny body was pale and still. He couldn't bear to watch her struggle over him. He knew what she was trying to do. Knew it in an instant. She was trying to raise _him_ from the dead. Not this dream child, but him; she believed he was dead. She felt responsible for that death.

_Oh, God. _

He was about to throw himself to the ground and pull her off the boy, off of _him_, when he noticed something odd where her hand made contact with his blood-smeared chest.

A glow. 

She winced as if in pain and fell forward, but never lost contact with the boy's chest. Light began to stream through her fingers and Max could make out the faint reddened pattern of bones beneath her skin. Face contorted, the tears were flowing freely now as she bent over the boy and he could tell she was holding her breath. Then both she and young Max gasped simultaneously, the boy shuddered once and opened his eyes to look at her.

Beneath her hand, in the place where the ragged gash had been, spilling his life around them both onto the pavement, there was _nothing_. Only fresh, clean, _healed _skin.

She was still bent toward him, taking in heavy, pained breaths, but there was a look of wonder in her eyes. _Recognition._ And as she watched, hand still pressed into his pale flesh, he began to _change, _to transform, and the glow began anew.

When it faded, it was no longer his younger self before her, but the self he had been when last she'd seen him.

With a shuddering gasp, the older Max opened his eyes and breathed her name. _"Liz. . ." _

Her answering smile, and the joy and relief on her face, lit up her entire being, washing away the fatigue and the fear and the desolation he'd seen there when he'd first entered her dream. It was more than he could bear. Watching ten feet away, Max thought his heart would break. No longer thinking clearly, or of the right and wrong, he moved to kneel beside them.

"Liz," he said, his voice echoing that of his doppelganger.

She looked up from the dream Max and into his eyes, confusion clouding her features in an instant. _"Max?" _Her eyes moved between the two, searching out the truth in this illusion, then with a shaking hand, she reached up to touch his face.

He felt it as a jolt of electricity to his system, a shock sent through every nerve ending. It felt real, _indescribably _real. Warm. Wonderful. He felt himself _not_ wanting to fightthe urge to return that touch. To throw all remaining rules to the dogs and take her in his arms. And love her.

Then as he was watching her, hungry eyes taking in her sweet and now smiling face, the smooth skin of her neck, the movement her breath caused beneath her cotton blouse, he saw a thing that did not belong.

It was a tiny thing at first.

A small drop of red against the pale paisley of her blouse. She was clearly unaware of it, but he stared at it, transfixed, as it grew from a drop to a line and then spread halfway down her chest, soaking through the cotton fabric and into her lab coat.

"Liz," he gasped out, but it was too late.

Her smile had faded into realization as the pain soaked through her body like the blood had her clothing. There was no surprise in her expression, merely resignation. _Acceptance_. As though there was a rightness to what was now happening. With his name on her lips, she fell back against the pavement and before he could touch her, before he could say or do anything . . . he was awake and back in his bed on the reservation, the dawn just starting to pinken the sky outside his window. He was breathing heavily and his pillowcase was soaked through with sweat and tears.

_This _was why he dreamwalked, why he'd coerced his sister into teaching him how. This was what he'd had to know.

He now knew what he had to do.

_tbc…_


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Late for the Sky  
Chapter: 3/4  
Author: ibshafer  
Category: Max/Liz (with some great Michael/Maria thrown in!)  
Rating: R (light)  
Summary: Heavy AU future fic. This story was written between seasons 1  
and 2, before the Skins, before Tess's betrayal, before Michael and Isabel  
lost respect for Max. It was written with Liz's sacrifice -- Max's destiny  
over her own happiness -- in mind. Most of the characters are involved  
(including Friggin' Eddie!), but I am a Dreamer first and foremost. . .  
Though not originally intended, the story has a pretty strong Candy  
storyline, as well. Maria just wouldn't be ignored or down played. g  
Author's Note: This story appeared in the first issue of the Roswell  
fanzine, Late for the Sky. © 2000 MadSeasonPress

Maria DeLuca loved New York City.

It was loud and smelly and _alive_. It was everything that Roswell, New Mexico was not—as far as you could get from Roswell without falling off the face of the earth. It was the place to find yourself.

And it was the very best place to get _lost_.

That's exactly what Maria had done. It was almost ten years since Liz had tearfully called her from the dormitory at Columbia where she was living and begged that she come join her here, and Maria had not regretted a single minute of the move.

Aside from the culture and commerce and other signs of civilization that thrived within its borders, New York was a place that almost visibly buzzed—no, _vibrated—_with life. Life so big and boisterous it could, if you wanted it to, and if you let it, obliterate everything in your own life, more specifically in your own _past_, replacing that everything with its own particular brand of frenetic energy. All the warped and painful items that you carried with you in the Baggage that was your Past. All the things that plagued you, that left you awake and alone late at night wondering what you'd done wrong, done to deserve the angst that had become your life. Who you'd pissed off or unwittingly flipped off amongst the gods. Who you'd failed to pay homage to. Who hated you enough to want to see you miserable. . .

_Gone. _

If you wished it. And Maria _had_ wished it.

New York had been a quick and handy life Band-aid and she wore it proudly, like a child would—as a badge of honor hiding the gash on a knee or elbow caused by a fall from the high slide, from some dangerous something.

Which is exactly what Michael Guerin had been. A dangerous something.

_May he rest in. . . _

So, Maria had let herself be absorbed into New York's vibrating life. Strike that. She'd rushed headlong _into_ that life. Straight into Greenwich Village. Into the kind of bohemian existence she was _genetically_ predisposed to, one that had not existed in dusty Roswell, New Mexico.

That first week, slogging through the filthy, grey slush that constituted the Big Apple's version of winter, shoulder to shoulder with the miserable masses on their way to miserable minimum wage jobs, Maria had felt more alive than she could ever remember being.

She'd been drawn to the Village, by the art, by the boutiques, by the people, by the lifestyle. She found herself a tiny job in a tiny shop on St. Mark's Place and commenced a tiny, all-consuming life.

The years passed and Maria still worked in the same little boutique, now as manager and sometime-designer. She sold cool clothing and accessories to the tragically trendy, occasionally appeared at CBGB's and the Asylum with the little pick-up band she'd joined, and once a month, like clock work, she made the trek out to Columbia for Chinese with Liz at Ollie's.

She hadn't thought of dried-up dusty Roswell, and the misery attached to the name, more than maybe twenty times since she'd left and then only at Christmas, in this case recently, when Amy's eclectic, sometimes tacky, always useless Christmas gifts would arrive, sweeping into her cluttered apartment like a dusty desert wind.

She'd moved out of the tiny place she and Liz had shared on 170th Street when the commute and the monastic lifestyle proved more than she could bear. Liz Parker would _always_ be her best friend, the one who understood the things she _didn't_ say, the things she _couldn't _say, but the weight of those things, of _both_ their things, was just too much.

They'd long since graduated from tubs of ice cream to bottles of cheap wine, but the conversations, and the miseries shared, still bound them together. Maria's was a constant litany of failed, but often raucously sexy relationships, of customers dissatisfied with satin pants two sizes too small, of taxi cabs stolen by day-trippers from New Jersey, of vegetarian Moo Shoo arriving with shredded pork.

Liz didn't so much complain about her life as she did list its occurrences, in desiccated, often graphic detail: Gross Anatomy classes that made "Night of the Living Dead" look like a Saturday morning cartoon; the colleague from Neurobiology that cheated off her paper that final year and then went on to ace her out of the top spot in the school standings; the little girl she was treating for complications from HIV who had missed her own birthday celebration; the landlord; the cold; the long hours. . .

Maria knew one thing for certain: whine though she might, Liz would be lost without these complaints in her life. She needed that little life Band-aid just as much, if not _more,_ than Maria did.

Liz Parker needed desperately _not_ to think.

That's what had, after two semesters, driven her from Columbia's molecular biology program. Too much time spent in quiet laboratories behind cold, lifeless microscopes. Too much time alone to think about how she'd walked away from him. And how she'd never told him she was sorry she'd left. And now it was too late.

It was too late for _all _of them and it had been for ten years now. Ever since the fire. Or for Maria, ever since the bike wreck in the Colorado Rockies late that same spring.

And though the years had passed and Liz's life had swelled to fill the void in her heart where Max had once been, Maria knew that this Liz, despite being devoted to her patients, was slowly, but very surely, dying inside.

Back when she and Liz had first become involved with the three of them, when this nightmare/adventure had begun, Liz had tried to explain to Maria just what it had felt like—the day Max had healed her. The day he had first touched her soul.

That's when she'd starting keeping a journal. (Not a diary, she'd clarified. Diaries were for the love-sick and the brainless. Maria had wanted to comment, but Liz had looked so serious, and so clearly in love, that Maria had bit her tongue.) She had wanted to remember every detail of that day, about the way Max had come to her as her life was bleeding out onto the Crashdown's worn linoleum. She said she wanted to remember what it had felt like so that if anyone ever touched her that way again, she'd know "what it was supposed to feel like."

It had seemed so innocent then. And so sweet. It had almost made Maria cry and that was saying a lot for Maria.

If she'd known then that that simple little statement would ruin Liz for life, she'd have grabbed the stupid journal-slash-diary and burned it.

Liz was a medical student then and a doctor in her residency at Columbia Presbyterian now. Her days were full, but she was not without her social life—or at least her version of one. There'd been boys, as an undergrad. And then, after that, there'd been men.

And no one, not-a-one, lived up to that her expectation of what love should be.

It never _did _"feel like it was supposed to." And as worthy as some of them might have been, Liz could never quite get past that. It was as though she'd sacrificed so very much of her soul to Max's destiny, she felt the Fates owed her the full-fledged Real Thing. And if a friendship or flirtation or a relationship didn't feel like that real thing, she'd pull the plug right then and there.

Or maybe she was just searching for the impossible; looking for Max in every man she met.

Then again, maybe she didn't think she deserved _anything. _Maria strongly suspected Liz _sabotaged _all of these so-called possibilities, that some small part of her _wanted _the life of a nun. Liz didn't have to say it—Maria had been reading her mind almost since they'd met. _Liz felt responsible for Max and Isabel's deaths. _

That night, that awful night of the fire, Max had tried, vainly once again, to get Liz to at least come and talk to him. To them all. Just to catch up. . .

They were all home on break and Alex had tried to organize a sort of reunion thing for them at the Crashdown. He and Isabel had remained friends. (Maria suspected they'd remained more than that, but she'd never been sure and she never got the chance to ask because just two years later, it was Alex's funeral they were all traveling back to Roswell for.) Liz had begged off, claiming jet lag and stomach flu and head ache and you name it. Maria was glad of it, though. The lie. It gave her a reason to stay away, too. To nurse her ailing friend. Michael was still away at UC Boulder, working through break, but the last thing Maria needed was a little alien reminder in the form of Isabel Evans.

When Liz had missed the dinner, Max had tried to get Mr. Parker to let him up to see her, but her father had staunchly followed the orders she'd given to refuse all entreaties. Taking a different tack, he'd climbed the fire escape to her little balcony, only to find Liz's room darkened and empty. They knew this because they'd camped out in her parents room above, expecting him to do just as he had. It had clearly broken Liz's heart to watch him hang his head and climb back down to the street, but she said she_ knew_ she was doing the right thing. And when she tossed the letter he'd left without reading it, again, she thought she was doing what had to be done. For his sake. For hers.

Maria had read the letter and it said exactly what she'd expected it would—that he thought Liz was wrong and that it didn't have to be this way, that he still loved her, that he'd always be there for her, if only she'd change her mind.

And in that time when Max and Liz would have been, could have been, _should _have been talking (or more), he and Isabel were driving home to their deaths. Because she'd turned him away.

And there began a lifetime of "_if only's." _

She didn't say it. She didn't _have _to say it. Maria knew what she was thinking. She knew what little mental stick Liz was beating herself with.

After ten years of trying to talk her out of it, through it, _over _it, she'd decided she could no longer be a front-row spectator at Liz's downward spiral. She loved her. She couldn't watch her rob herself of life any longer. So she moved out. And Liz had understood. She wasn't going to change, but she understood. They were still friends. They were still there for each other. They just lived in different worlds.

Worlds that came together once a month for dinner at Ollie's.

Which, Maria just remembered, she was going to be late for.

Because a reporter from some dusty tribune out west had seen an ad for the boutique in the Village Voice, done a little research into the shop and, oddly, her band as well, and wanted to meet to talk.

_What a chance to promote the boutique,_ she'd thought. _And the band._

She should have done the paranoid thing and waved him off, but her vanity got the better of her and she set up a meeting over coffee at Baxter's which was just up the street. On a busy corner in a very public coffee shop. At rush hour.

She'd be fine.

_Shut up, Amy, _she warned the phantom, disembodied voice of her mother that always chimed in whenever she ventured to take a chance. _It's just an interview. I'll answer some questions about the shop, talk about the band, even say "Hi!" to my dear old mom in Roswell, NM. What could be wrong with that? _

Maria was just locking the cash drawer into the stock room safe when she heard the wind chimes at the front door tinkle someone's arrival.

"We're closed!" she called, muttering something under her breath about people needing to learn to read. She'd flipped the _Check Us Out Tomorrow! _sign 20 minutes ago. And had obviously forgotten to the snap the lock at the same time.

_Great. Just great. _

She was meeting that reporter, Ken Whatshisname, in ten and she didn't have time for last minute browsers right now. When she didn't hear the chimes signal the illiterate's departure, she sighed, swore softly and finished up what she was doing. Reaching for the baseball bat she kept—just in case—she hefted it once, then stepped out of the stock room and back onto the selling floor. For once, she was sorry they'd found such a large space when they moved the shop. It was a security nightmare. Lots of nooks and crannies. No really clear line of sight. And racks friggin' everywhere.

_It's a boutique, Maria, _she chided herself_. We're about excess here, not minimalism. _

"I'm sorry, but we're closed," she said smoothly, trying to keep the tension from her voice as she searched for her "guest." "We'll be open again tomorrow at 9 if you'd like to come back then," she continued, peering around the too-high racks. _Damn! _She made a mental note to have Jesse take them down a level when he came in on Monday. _Screw the inventory! _

There was still no response from the interloper and she was really starting to get spooked. She heard a soft rustling of taffeta as someone walked by the rack of dusters she was sorry she ordered and the sound of it nearly made her jump out of her skin. Someone _was_ here. Close by now.

A sharp intake of breath. Not hers. Then someone was speaking.

"_Hello?_" A man. "I have an appointment?" he said in a hesitant and vaguely familiar voice. "We . . . we were supposed to meet at Baxter's, but I thought it might be better if we talked here."

"Oh!" Maria said, her voice brightening. "You're the _reporter_." Instantly, she relaxed. She was still holding the bat, but she now knew who was here, anyway. And from the direction of his voice, he was right by the front counter. Rounding the corner, she smoothed her hair with the hand not holding a weapon and prepared herself to be effervescent and charming and interesting

And was _totally _unprepared for what she found waiting for her there.

_"Max!" _she screamed, clutching her chest. The bat fell to the floor. "You're—"

Max looked as though he had not expected this exact reaction from her. "_Yes_. I'm Max," he said, nodding. There was a faint hint of amusement in his voice, but he reached for her hands to calm her. "It's okay, Maria."

Maria pulled away, shaking her head almost convulsively. "That's not what I was going to say. . . I was _going_ to say—you're _alive_." Feeling the room begin dip off kilter, she backed up against the counter and fished out a vial of something calming from her pocket. "Or _are_ you alive? And what are you doing here? Am I dead, too! Are you here to take me to heaven?" She took a deep breath, shivered, then wailed. "Are you here to take me to _Hell_?"

His face crinkled slowly as he attempted to stifle a laugh. "You haven't changed a bit, Maria." Max found a pitcher of water, filled a glass, handed it gently to her. "You're not dead. _I'm _not dead. I have some explaining to do. And you need to calm down."

"Calm down. _Right." _She regarded him, dubiously. "You come back after ten years, apparently from the dead, and you expect me to just be cool about this? Are you _serious_?"

Max found a funky-looking chair by the dressing rooms and carried it over for her. She waved it away, then slid down the counter to the floor, fanning herself with a hand.

"Obviously a good choice to meet you _here_, then, huh?" He set the chair next to where she'd dropped and sat down, regarding her with concern on his face.

Her breathing was slowing somewhat. "I don't remember you being funny, Max." She glanced up at him, gaze narrowed. "Now I know why. . ."

At this he did laugh, though faintly. She saw what looked like age at the corners of his eyes as he did, marveled at how he'd done the human thing like everyone else and accumulated years. But then, she didn't know what he'd been through since he'd "died." Maybe hell? Maybe worse. Maybe it was more than years she was seeing there.

"Wait," she said, holding up a hand. "_You're _the reporter? Ken Something?"

Again, a smile. A nod. "Kenneth Thomas Clark. From the Trib. New Mexico. . ."

Something about the sound of that snapped her brain into gear. There was a riddle there. . . Then she had it. Ken T. Clark. Clark Kent. She almost grinned. It was almost funny.

"Superman complex?" she said archly

Max shrugged. "Isabel's idea. . . You're the first to pick up on it."

"Lucky me. Do I get a prize?" _And did you have to bring up Isabel? _

"Listen, Maria. We need to talk. I—"

"Damn _straight _we do!" She pulled herself up off the floor, started pacing around the racks. "You let us think you were dead, Max. You let _Liz _think you were dead. Do you know what that girl has been through? Do you!"

"Yes, I _do_," Max said softly, something that sounded like regret thickening his voice. "That's why I'm here."

"Why? Why now, Max? Liz has got a life here. She's got a profession."

"I _know_. I've been following her . . . her career. I know she finished med school—two years early. That she got an appointment to the emergency medicine department at Columbia Presbyterian. That she lives near the hospital. That she's still single. . ."

Was that it? Was he still in love with her?

Oh, wait. Of _course _he was. Just like her. . .

_Old soulmates don't die. They just pine away. _

Maria felt her Liz-protectiveness kick in. "What are you trying to say, Max? That she's single because she's missing you? That she's become a _nun _because of you?" _Oh, wait. That _is_ what happened. . . _She backpedaled. "A doctor's life is a busy one, you know. And she's in the middle of her residency so her life belongs to the hospital. She _has _no time for. . ." She stopped ranting, blinked once. "Why am I telling you this?" She shook her head, tried to clear it. "Why are you here, Max? What do you want?"

He took a deep breath, started to speak, but then her mind jumped to another riddle and she cut him off.

_"Michael!" _Her face flushed with a variety of emotions—realization, anger, pain, joy. "Michael isn't dead, either, is he?"

Max regarded her silently for a moment, pressed his lips together tightly, then shook his head.

"He's an engineer now, working on our systems on the reservation. He's also an art teacher, part-time."

Maria tried vainly to cut and paste these new bits of information into her mental Michael document, but the fit was jagged. Didn't work. "An engineer. An art teacher. On the reservation," she repeated blandly.

"We _all_ live on the reservation," Max continued. "We've been there since . . . the fire."

Did his voice just catch? Was that the infamous Max angst she was hearing now?Maria took a step back, suddenly aware that there were other lives involved here beyond just her own and Liz's. What was real and what was fiction? And what _had _they been through? Foggy, her mind scanned the archives.

"So . . . so then the fire. . ." she stumbled over her words now, realization dawning quickly. "Your _parents_."

Max turned away from her, but she saw him wave a hand near his eyes, heard him draw breath in quickly through his nose. When he turned back, his face was set, but she knew what it had cost him

"My parents died in that fire. It was supposed to have been _us_. We just let them believe that they succeeded."

_Oh, God. How awful. They've been living with that for ten years? _

"And Michael?"

_Of course, Michael would have to play dead, too. Of course. . . _Her heart, already working overtime in the beating department, stepped up the rhythm anew. _Michael was alive. Alive. . . _

Max looked up at her now. "Michael 'died' in a bike accident on his way home from school after finals that year. With Nasedo's and Jim Valenti's help, we got new identities, new lives. It bought us a little time. They still came, but we were ready for them. And we fought. And—"

"Wait," she cut him off again, her mind still running the history. "Is _that_ how Alex died? Was he . . ."

Max regarded her grimly, then relented. "He'd found out we were alive, tracked Isabel down at a shoot."

"A shoot?"

"She's a photographer," he answered, nodding. "_Diana Clark_." His voice was almost reverent. "She's _very _good. Works mostly with Native Americans. Children. She put out a book, anonymously, of course, to benefit the Native American Children's Fund. Raised a lot of money."

"That was _Isabel_?" She'd seen that book, almost bought it. "Wow. . ."

Max seemed to stutter here, not wanting to continue. "_They'd_ tracked her down, too. And . . . and Alex got caught in the cross-fire. They used him to try and get to _her_. . ."

_Oh, God. . ._  
"So, it wasn't a car crash." A statement, not a question.

Max's answering headshake was stiff, pained. "It wasn't a car crash."

Maria worked her jaw for a moment, for once at a loss. Blindly finding her way to the chair, she felt her way into it. Breathed slowly for a while. Felt her eyes begin to fill.

_"Sweet Alex. . ." _she murmured as the tears began to flow in earnest.

Moving to her side, Max's hands were on her shoulders, then cradling her head as she wept. "Alex wasn't supposed to die, Maria. _None _of you were. That's why we couldn't tell either you or . . . or Liz. _Anything_."

She reached up and found his hand, squeezed it in genuine pain, genuine support. "Jesus, Max. I can't . . . I can't believe you've all had to go through this. _Alone_." Again, she felt herself struggling with divergent emotions. Again, she felt the tears start fresh.

Suddenly she needed more from him, needed to give more _to_ him. On her feet in an instant, she slid her arms around his neck and held him close, feeling his warmth circle her as he did the same. He was breathing hard against her, and she knew he was fighting to keep control, knew he couldn't _afford _to lose it now. Somehow, _dear God_, she knew that.

"It'll all be over soon," she said softly into his ear, her arms tightening around his strong back. "_I know it_."

When Max pulled away, his face was an open book. Was that relief she saw there? And if it was, why was it mixed with pain?

"It's all over _now_," he whispered.

Not for the first time since this "interview" had begun, she felt the confusion fight to take over.

"I've still got a lot to explain," he said, taking a deep breath. "And I'm going to need your help with something. But for now, I think we _both _need some time. And maybe some food. You hungry?"

Maria's laugh was a short burst of air through her nostrils. "_Food? _I need a _drink_. . ."

Taking her hand, he pulled her towards the door. "C'mon," he said. "I'm buying."

Max watched Maria through the window of the employee lounge. Liz was due to start her shift in a few minutes and Maria was waiting in the hallway while he stayed in here out of sight.

He hadn't realized there'd been windows in this room when he'd seen it before. In Liz's dreams. Probably because they'd been drawn against the light of the hall so she could sleep. He'd pulled back the heavy, insulated drape so he could see her when she arrived, but left the gauzy sheer in place to shield him, hopefully, from view.

The ER was pretty much as it had appeared in so many of Liz's dreams, a little less crazed, perhaps, but instantly recognizable. It sent a shiver of memory through him. _The last dream he'd walked._

The playground. The blood. The transformation. The transference of wounds from his young self to Liz. The look on her face when she'd seen him there in her dream. Had she realized it was him or had she just taken the confusion and the seeming double images as a natural part _of _her dream. Had she felt that jolt of electricity when she'd touched the real Max's face? And how exactly was she going to react when she saw him standing there in the flesh?

_Alive. _

Max had been hashing this out in his head for over three months now, debating the rightness of it, debating the approach, debating his motives, even. Was it just that he desperately wanted to see her again? Or was it more?

In the years since they'd been forced, by destiny, by necessity, to go their separate ways, Liz had never been far from his thoughts. He'd learned how to hide his still-deep feelings for her from Michael and Isabel, but they were still there, torturing him with the most painful _"if only" _of all.

_If only it weren't so dangerous. _

There was no way he could reveal himself to her. It wasn't safe, for either of them. Had it not hurt so deeply, Max might have thought it somehow amusing that the same rationale that kept them as "just friends" for so long, now had him playing "just dead."

But these _"if only's" _existed during the Confrontation. Now that it was over, all bets were off. . .

Max slipped a hand into his jacket pocket until he found the cool metal disk there, smooth against his fingers. He flipped it over to trace the symbol on the other side with his finger, and nearly jumped out of his skin when his cell phone, which was in the same pocket, rang.

Silencing it quickly, he did a quick check out the lounge window to see if Maria, or anyone _else_,like Li_z, _might have heard it, but the ER raged on, oblivious, as did Maria who was still standing there by herself, pretending to read the notices on the bulletin board and impatiently tapping a boot heel against the linoleum. He saw her steal a glance towards him and he nodded in return, wondering if she could see him.

"Hello," he said warily into the receiver. "Ken Clark."

"You can drop the act, Max. It's me." _Michael. _"Where are you?"

Max stopped short, unsure of what to say or how much he wanted to tell him.

Michael went on before he could respond. "Look, I _know _you're in New York. Why? We're leaving in two weeks, Max. You already quit the paper. You're not covering any story out there."

His life in hiding had given him a healthy list of alibis. He ran them through his head, for a moment unable to choose one. At the last minute, he ditched them all.

"You _know _why I'm here."

There was a pause before Michael answered and when he did, there was something in his voice Max hadn't expected. Was it sympathy? "Yeah. Yeah, I _do_."

"Don't try and talk me out of it, Michael," Max said quickly. "I can't leave things this way."

"I know you can't, man. I just wanted to. . ." Michael trailed off, sounding uncomfortable. "So . . . have you seen her yet?"

Max cut a quick look out the window. Maria was still alone, dancing from one foot to the other now.

Maria. Max shook his head. _Man, am I slow._"Maria seems good, Michael," he said softly.

He heard Michael fumble with the phone for a moment. "I was asking about _Liz_, Max. Have you seen Liz yet?"

_You called about Liz. Right. . . _ Max smiled softly, but didn't challenge him, allowing the man his illusions. He knew better, though. He knew Michael's dreams were just as tortured as his were. Necessity doesn't affect the heart. Silence isn't silent on the inside; he knew Michael thought about Maria just as much as he thought about Liz.

"Not yet," he whispered. "Soon, though."

There was another pause and Max could hear Michael breathing into the receiver. "What are you going to do?" he asked finally.

_What _am _I going to do?_ Max thought. "I don't know," he said aloud. "Go somewhere and talk. See if things are as—see if things are how they seem."

More silence and Max could picture Michael chewing his lip "And Maria," he asked finally, saying her name aloud for the first time, maybe, in years. Max could hear the word catch in his throat.

"I was going to go back and see her. Afterwards."

"_Don't_," Michael said quickly. "Let me."

"What do you mean?" Max asked.

Michael sighed. Probably more lip chewing. "I'm in New York. I followed you."

Max nodded. _Of course, you did. You couldn't stay away any more than I could. _

"Okay," he said, quietly. "Do you need. . . did you take the other one?" He knew, though, already.

"Yeah . . . I did."

There was an awkward silence and Max knew Michael had the same running argument going through his head that he'd been fighting with. Was it right? Was it wrong? Was it selfish? Wouldn't it be better to just leave well enough alone?

He heard voices in the hallway coming closer and looked up just in time to see Maria heading his way. With Liz. They paused outside the door, near to his window. "They're here. I've got to go."

"Good luck," Michael said, and Max heard that sympathy again. He was momentarily sorry he'd never thought to have this conversation with Michael before. It might have done them both some good.

"You, too," Max said softly then flipped the phone closed.

". . .No, really, Liz. I'm fine. I just wasn't hungry tonight," Maria was saying, her voice muffled by the wall. "How are _you _feeling? Any more of those strange dreams?"

Liz's answer was tired, strained. "Not in a few weeks." _She's right there. . . . _Max tried to get a glimpse of her through the window without getting too close to it, but had no luck. "What's up with you, Maria? You're acting odd."

"Odder than usual, you mean?" A beat. "Sorry. I'm a little nervous. It's just that I have to tell you something, Liz. Or, I mean, I have to _show _you something. And it's going to be a shock. And I can't think of a good way to do it."

From the other side of the wall, Max could almost _see_ Liz's smile. Knew she'd want to reassure her friend. Even if being reassuring _weren't _a part of her physician's training. "How bad can it be, Maria? Another tattoo? Did you get something _else _pierced?" A soft laugh. "I'm sorry. I can tell this is serious. Maybe you should just show me."

Max held his breath, then braced himself as the lounge door swung slowly inward.

"It's dark in here, Maria," Liz said, warily. "What are you hiding?"

"More like _who,_" Maria breathed, gently guiding her around. To face him.

He'd expected shock from her. A Liz Parker version of Maria's near-fainting hyperventilation. She'd have a right to it, after all. He'd been prepared to revive her with a touch, to bring her around, to breathlessly explain himself and how he'd come to be alive.

He hadn't expected the silence.

She seemed to be holding her breath as she studied him, trying to process the sudden, rather huge, bit of information his presence there constituted. He saw confusion played out across her face, mixed with several other emotions, all battling for air time. Joy. Pain. Surprise. No, _not_ surprise. Strangely, _not _surprise.

He regarded her as calmly as he could muster with his heart pounding double-time in his chest. The years had been both wondrous and cruel to her, gently sculpting the lines of her face into graceful and beautiful planes, but fading the glow of her skin (too many hours spent in artificial hospital light) and etching stress lines around her still wide, still clear eyes. Her hair was longer than he'd known it and just as lustrous as he remembered. He could imagine the feel of it between his fingers, the scent of it jasmine or possibly almond. Her expression, though, was becoming painful to him; the confusion; the conflict. He wanted to cross the room, gather her into his arms and kiss the look from her sweet face, but he held back, afraid it would only scare her more. Afraid, too, that she wouldn't want him to. After all this time. That he no longer had the right.

It seemed, though, that she didn't agree, because she was suddenly standing so close to him he could hear the faltering breaths she took. She reached out with a shaking hand to touch his face, testing his solidity and once that was proven, tracing his jaw line with first one hand, then the other. At the touch of her fingertips on his skin, there was an echo of that electric jolt he'd felt from his last dreamwalk. The way her eyes widened, he could see she'd felt it, too.

"I knew it," she said simply, wonder on her face.

He searched her eyes and saw the truth of it. Had she known all _along_? Or just since that night? Didn't Maria say she'd been having strange dreams? Had she realized they'd been more than that?

"How did this—How are you _here_?" She wouldn't take her eyes from his face, as though afraid he'd disappear if she looked away. There was a knot of pain, or something else, between her brows and he longed to smooth it away, to erase the guilt. "All this _time_, I thought I'd—I mean, e_veryone _thought. . ."

_"I know_," he breathed, apologetic, aching. "I'm so sorry. . ."

She seemed to be cataloguing his features now, searching for changes, insuring all was well. Her eyes ran carefully from one to the other—eyes, ears, nose, lips—and when his face was completed, she let her gaze wander down his body for a similar check. He felt his skin flush and everywhere her eyes moved, there was a tingle and a warmth, as though she were following each with a fingertip. Or a kiss. . .

"Um, _guys_?" Maria said gently, from her place at the door. "We're approaching a shift change. This room is gonna be swamped in a few."

Suddenly shy, Liz smiled and finally looked away from him. It took her a moment to find her voice. "She's right . . . Maria, have you got your cell on you? I've got a favor I can call in, someone who owes me a shift. And then we can get out of here."

Before Maria could move, Max drew his phone from his pocket, held it out for her. She took it from him, her hand lingering on his for an extra second. Again, the tingle. He fought the rush of images, at once surprised at the ease of the connection. From the briefest of touches. All those years apart, had strengthened, rather than weakened it. Had concentrated the energy.

Max shivered, fought for control. He needed to get out of here now. With Liz.

_Oh, God, _he thought. _This is not why I'm here. _He forced himself to look away from her. _Isn't it? _

Phone in hand, Liz moved to the side to make her call. "Jerry? It's me. Liz. I need you to come in and work for me tonight. . ."

Maria was still standing by the door, a faint smile on her lips, looking like she knew everything he was feeling. What they _both _were feeling. Max smiled softly at her in return.

"I think I'm gonna head out, if that's okay," she said. "You two have a lot to talk about."

"Maria," Max said, pulling her to him and squeezing her shoulders warmly. "When I told you before that you hadn't changed, I meant that as a compliment." He felt her laughing as he held her close.

"Sure you did, Max," she said, kissing his cheek.

"Thank you for your help, Maria. A_ll_ of it."

She fixed him with a meaningful look. "Take care of her, Max," she said.

Liz wrapped up her phone conversation.

Maria drew Liz to her briefly, silently mouthed the words, "_Call me,"_ then left.

Alone for the first time since she'd left Roswell, Max and Liz stared at each other, for a moment unsure what came next.

Liz was the first to speak.

"Let's go back to my apartment."

_Groovy. _

As if the sudden downpour hadn't been enough, Maria had spilled a container of egg drop soup while she fumbled with her keys. It splashed down the front of her straight black skirt and made a mess of the floor.

_Note to self,_ she thought. _Get a little table to put _outside _the door. It'll save you on dry cleaning bills later. _

She'd done the front door juggling act plenty of times without losing a Macy's circular or drop of soup, but then she'd never had a day this weird before. At least, not in a long, long time. Her synapses were trying to get themselves around some pretty heady stuff right now, shuffling these new bits of Roswellian history in amongst the old.

She also wasn't ready to consider what these reality updates might mean for _her_. Nope, she'd deal with the "her" part later. Right now, all she could handle was what it meant for Liz.

_God, Liz. _All those years of believing she'd been responsible for Max's death, torturing herself, s_acrificing _herself to her profession. And the _joy_ abstinence. Liz had spent a decade denying herself the right to pleasure. As much as Maria tried to be a good/bad influence on her, Liz lived _only_ to work. She was the Queen of Denial. . .

_What happens now?_ Maria thought.

She was trying _not _to worry about Max and Liz and what happened now. They seemed . . . well, they'd seemed rather _wonderful _back there at the hospital, but she still had some lingering doubts about why Max had come to New York at this particular point in time. There was something strange in his demeanor that she couldn't quite put a finger on yet, but she _would_. If she could just get the friggin' door open.

The last lock sprung and she pushed her way inside, then began twisting them back into place. She was about to turn and dump her armload onto the kitchen counter, when she heard a sound she shouldn't have in her empty apartment.

Someone taking a deep breath.

Someone that wasn't her.

She froze. "I have a gun," she managed to croak out.

"You do _not_," said an amused voice. "You don't believe in guns."

Before she could stop the retort, it had popped from her mouth. "What? Like I don't believe they _exist_?" She stopped short. She'd had this argument before. Once. A very long time ago.

With Michael.

_Screw the kitchen counter. _Maria dropped everything she was holding on the floor in front of her and spun around.

Michael sat on her couch, one boot casually crossed against the worn knee of his jeans. He was gazing mournfully at the pile on the floor. "Damn, was that Chinese? The food on the plane was awful. . ."

_Guess I'm dealing with the "me" part now, after all. _

Fighting every instinct she had, Maria squared her shoulders in what she hoped wasn't a vain attempt at strength.

"Not dead, huh?" she asked, impassively.

She was hoping her face didn't show any of the joy that was mixed in with the shock she was feeling. She was actually hoping the shock wasn't showing either. _Cool _was what she was going for. After all, she was a City girl now. She worked in Greenwich Village. She moved with a crowd of hip young people. She wasn't the spacey, Roswellian teen she'd been. She was a sophisticated woman of New York. She didn't smile, though she wanted to. She didn't run across the room and leap into his lap, though she _very _much wanted to. She just stood there regarding him calmly.

Too bad he wasn't buying it.

"Come over here."

His voice was soft and warm and it made the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She was standing stock still, solid in her Doc Martens, but she could almost feel her legs moving, feel herself running across the room, feel herself jumping onto the couch.

"No way," she said, taking a decisive step back. Maybe _not _so decisive. She was starting to shake. "You don't get to come back from the dead and play Mr. Casual with me. Not after all this time." Michael pressed his lips together in a tight line, letting some air escape his nostrils. He looked her in the eye for a moment, then away.

"Fair enough," he said. He uncrossed his leg and leaned forward. "_Ask._"

Her heart fluttered in her chest. "Ask, _what?_" she said, trying for casual now herself and dead certain she was failing. "What am I supposed to want to know, Michael?" His name caught in her mouth and she almost bit her tongue. She hadn't realized she'd stricken it from her vocabulary. She tried again. "Okay, here's one; what's it like to not be dead?" She laughed now, feeling the anger rising in her. "Really, Michael, I want to know, 'cause _I've_ been dead since the day you died. . ."

_Where did _that _come from?_

And then it all fell apart: the semblance of cool; the façade of indignation; even the anger. She _wasn't _angry. She understood. She understood everything they'd had to do and why. It just hurt to see him sitting there all nonchalance and attitude. All _"c'mere, baby, here's your man" _macho. In fact, maybe she _was _angry. For that. Not for the rest, though. She knew that had the circumstances been different they'd have worked it out.

The circumstances _were _different now, though,and he was sitting on her couch while she stood dumbly by the front door trying to start an argument with him. Why?

"Maria, I—" he started to say, but she cut him off.

_"Come. Here." _Her teeth were grit. Her hands were balled into fists.

Michael clearly did not need to be asked twice. He rose from the couch and crossed the room in three easy strides. She noted the solidity of the muscles moving beneath his denim shirt and marveled at how changed he seemed. A _man_. She shivered. Then he was pressing her up against the closed front door and she could _feel_ the changes. _Everywhere. . ._

_Oh. God._

_tbc…_


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Late for the Sky  
Chapter: 4/4  
Author: ibshafer  
Category: Max/Liz (with some great Michael/Maria thrown in!)  
Rating: R (light)  
Summary: Heavy AU future fic. This story was written between seasons 1  
and 2, before the Skins, before Tess's betrayal, before Michael and Isabel  
lost respect for Max. It was written with Liz's sacrifice -- Max's destiny  
over her own happiness -- in mind. Most of the characters are involved  
(including Friggin' Eddie!), but I am a Dreamer first and foremost. . .  
Though not originally intended, the story has a pretty strong Candy  
storyline, as well. Maria just wouldn't be ignored or down played. g  
Author's Note: This story appeared in the first issue of the Roswell  
fanzine, Late for the Sky. © 2000 MadSeasonPress

_Now for me some words come easy  
But know that they don't mean that much  
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch  
You never knew what I loved in you  
I don't know what you loved in me  
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be _

_Awake again I can't pretend  
And I know I'm alone  
And close to the end  
Of the feeling we've known _

_How long have I been sleeping  
How long have I been drifting alone through the night  
How long have I've dreaming I could make it right  
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might   
To be the one you need _

Somewhere between the hospital and the apartment, Liz had taken his hand.

They'd been crossing 165th Street when a cabbie ran the light. She'd seen it first, grabbing hold of him and pulling him back. Once the sudden flash of yellow had passed and he'd recovered from the shock of it, he'd registered the warmth of her tiny hand clasping his tightly—and the fact that though the danger had gone, she hadn't let go yet.

Again, he marveled at the feel of her skin against his and the faint tingle of electricity it carried. It was like a tiny center of warmth in the wintry New York street. The sensation was intense and needful. It soaked through the skin of his hand to the bones in his fingers and then shot straight to his heart, which spread it to the rest of his body. Before he knew it, he was gasping softly in the cold and holding on to her hand for dear life.

She looked up at him and smiled—a smile that spoke of realization and yearning and more—and gently hurried him along, pulling his hand, making him rush after her to maintain the connection.

_The connection. _

The images were flowing easily now from his mind to hers, from her mind to his. In a flash, their lives, their histories, were played out in sensory Technicolor. The visions were not as intense, nor as orgasmic, as they had been when they were younger. The revelation of it, the cadence of it, was more refined now. More reflective. Less compelled by chemical need.

Though that was still there.

As he walked, as she urged him along, he saw in flashes of prescience, her life as she'd known it. The long hours in the ER—the patients, the misery. The emptiness of her apartment—of her heart, of her bed. The things in her life she believed separated her from everyone else—her fears, her guilt. In her desperation and need to _feel _that guilt, she had surrendered her life to it because she did not think she deserved better.

Because she'd left him. Because she'd left him to die when she could have stopped it. She should never have had to known that feeling.

He held on more tightly now, hoping what she saw in him somehow lessened that pain. Would she see how desperately he had ached to be with her, to know she was well, to tell her he loved her even though he'd known she was right to leave him? Holding her hand in his, he willed her to "see" those things, running them through his mind like a slide show.

And when moments later he stood shivering in her apartment, she gently helped him from his coat, steered him towards the radiator, and silenced him when he tried to speak.

"Not now," she said, her voice breathless, her body pressed warm and insistent against his. "There'll be time for that later. I know all I need to for now. . ."

And then he felt the smoothness of her nimble hands on the bare skin on his chest (she had _always _taken the lead), and for the time being, everything else ceased to matter. . .

Hours later, Max lay watching her as she slept, awed by the simple act of her breathing. He noted, with no small amount of pleasure, that she still held his hand firmly in her own and he reveled in the sensation. Somehow it seemed more intimate than all other gestures; even after what they had just shared. It spoke of innocence, of that first tentative touch, and it reminded him of all they had been to each other and how far they had come.

The realization of that, and the reality of being there with her, brought a fresh smile to his lips. He would have been content to spend the rest of his days in this sanctuary, far from duty and the life he knew was waiting for him; far from the thing that had brought him to New York and Liz's arms to begin with.

Again he debated. Would Liz have been better off if she'd never known him? Or never loved him? Could he take that from her? Did he have the right?

Hesitating just a moment longer, he studied her sweet face in the candlelight, gently kissed the hand he held and slipped out of bed. In the hallway of Liz's tiny apartment, he found his jacket draped over a chair and reached into the pocket, searching. His hand brushed against his cell phone, but he did not find the medallion. Nor was it in the other pocket.

"Did you really think I'd let you do it?" said a soft voice behind him.

Max spun around to find Liz standing in the bedroom doorway, regarding him intently. He was at once aware of how he stood before her; naked, both in flesh and intent.

He saw something flash in her hand and knew it was the medallion. _I should have known. _

"Let me rephrase that," she said before he could respond. "Did you really think you could _hide _it from me? What you were planning?" There was no rancor in her voice and only the slightest hesitation.

What could he tell her that she didn't already know? "Liz," he began, softly. "I don't . . . I don't know _what_ I thought. Other than I had to try and put things right. I had to give you a chance to be happy."

She shook her head. "And this was how you thought to do it, Max? To _erase _parts of my memory? Suck them up in this . . . in this device." She stopped to study the metal disk in her hand and it was then that he noticed how carefully she held it. "Would I have felt it . . . as they left? My memories?" She looked up at him now, eyes brimming, and he could imagine those memories moving across her mind's eye, like a slide show. . .

_The day in the Crashdown when she'd been shot. click Going home with him after her grandmother had passed away and holding him as she cried. click Her balcony and the sweetness of their first kiss. click The look of pure relief on her face when she'd seen "him" standing before her in the Fun House, not yet realizing it was Nasedo. click The raw grief on her face as she turned to him one last time before running down that ridge, away from him. . . _

"You would have taken all that from me?"

Setting the medallion gingerly on the coffee table, Liz grabbed a faded green Indian blanket from the back of the couch, shivering as she wrapped it around herself and sank into the cushions. Max doubted the pale silk nightgown she wore afforded much warmth, but recognized the tremulous way she moved as something else.

_"Liz. . ."_ He watched the tears beginning to slide down her pale cheek and the shock of it, the agony of it, cut straight through to his heart. "I would have taken the _pain _from you. That part of your memory that told you to feel guilt and responsibility for a thing you should never have known." He sat down next to her and swept the hair from her face. With a thumb he gently smoothed her tears away. "I knew . . . I knew what you were doing to yourself. And I couldn't let you go on that way."

She looked up at him, her brow suddenly furrowed in confusion. "How could you have known what I was "doing" to myself?" A second later Liz's deep brown eyes went wide with realization. "It's true then. I thought . . . I thought I was going _crazy_, dreaming about you. Dreaming that I saw you over and over. That I touched you. It felt so _real_. . ."

She _had _known.

Hearing it, knowing for certain that she'd felt him there as he'd walked her dreams, sent a shiver through him. Seeing that, she drew closer, holding the blanket out for him to share. He took it, grateful for the warmth, but grateful, too, for her acceptance. She could just have easily been angry at him for the intrusion.

"All that time. . ." she said, the wonder having returned to her voice. "And you were there with me."

"You weren't supposed to _know _I was there, Liz," he said. "I just needed to see what your life was like. To see if you were happy."

She took his hand in hers again, squeezing gently and he felt another jolt of electricity. She felt it, too. Fought it. Continued. "Don't you get it yet, Max? I can _always _feel you. Whether it makes sense or not . . . That's what made the past ten years so hard. Everything I _knew _told me . . . told me you were _gone_." She bit her lip and when she continued, her voice was soft and strained. "I'd seen your parent's house. I went to your funeral. I'd even read the coroner's report, which I'd known was a bit of fiction on Valenti's part." The hint of a smile now. "I just didn't realize how _much _fiction it was. _Inside,_ though," she touched the pale pink fabric over her heart. "Inside I knew _differently._ If you were dead, something inside me would _feel_ it. I would know." She shook her head. "But I knew I had to be wrong. There was just too much evidence." She drew her knees to her chest, hugging them close. "I never got past it. I mean, I tried. I had a career and a life here. Some part of me, though, was always expecting you to walk around the next corner and every day that didn't happen. . . ." She trailed off and he saw her beautiful eyes fill with tears again.

It was just too much. He loved her _too _much.

"I'm so sorry. . ." he breathed, his eyes fixed on hers. Thumb beneath her chin, he tipped her face up towards his, leaned in and brushed his mouth against hers. "I never wanted you to know that kind of pain, Liz. I. . ."

She drew back, silencing him with a fingertip to his lips. "It doesn't matter anymore, Max." She was holding his face in her hands now. "None of it matters." She kissed him softly—the whisper of a touch. "You're here now. For however long, you're _here. . ._"

"Okay, so I get that you're leaving. Earth, I mean," Maria said matter-of-factly. No point in sugar-coating it. She was guessing she didn't have a whole lot of time. "And I get that you're not planning to take me with you."

Michael was watching her now, warily, chopsticks poised above the take-out container. She glanced over, then motioned with her chin. "Watch it," she said. "You're dripping sauce on the sheets." Popping the spicy morsel into his mouth, Michael set the container down on the floor beside the bed, chewing. With a barely perceptible smirk, he glanced up at her briefly, then waved his hand over the sauce that had dribbled there. One second, she had General Tso's seeping into her flannel sheets, the next nothing.

"Impressive," she said, meaning it, and he responded with one of those patented, knee-melting Michael grins that had her heart beating faster all over again.

Taking a deep breath, she continued quickly, before she lost her nerve.

"What I _don't _get is why you're here _now, _Michael. Why the sudden alien pilgrimage to New York? Why not leave well enough alone?"

_There! It's said. I can smack myself for saying it later. . ._

Michael stared at her so long, so intently, that she felt the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She could see the gears shifting in his head and wondered what exactly he was debating. Which version of the truth he was rehearsing. Which fiction.

After what seemed like an eternity, he leaned toward her, achingly slow, eyes never leaving hers, and guided her face with one hand towards his. He kissed her so softly and so sweetly, her face was wet with tears when he'd pulled away and she let them stand, unshamed.

Before she could ask him if that was his answer, he'd slipped from the sheets and padded into the living room to retrieve his jeans from the floor where they'd fallen.

Despite the moment, Maria allowed herself an appreciative further appraisal of the . . . changes she could see in Michael. She fought back the blush creeping up past the collar of the too-large Michael-Guerin-smelling denim shirt she'd thrown on to run downstairs in before. _Like I've never seen a naked man before. . . _

Of course, this wasn't just _any _man. This was Michael.

When he returned, groping through a pocket, his face was awash with emotion and she thought she spotted fear there. Or was it uncertainty?

Finding what he'd been searching for, he drew it into the light and held it gingerly out to her.

"Wh--what is it?" she asked, afraid to touch the ancient-looking bronze medallion. It seemed more than mere decoration. It almost sparked with power. She shivered reflexively. It was so . . . _alien._

Michael smiled softly. "It's okay," he said. "You can touch it now. It isn't set."

_It wasn't set? What the Hell did _that _mean? _

"I repeat, what is it?" Maria tried to slip some of that patented sarcasm into her tone, but there was a chill crawling up her spine and it was making it hard to keep her voice steady enough to carry it off.

Again, the silence from Michael, but this time she got the feeling he was just trying to work up an explanation that would make sense to her. Alien technology required small words and slow speech? She watched him chew on the thought for a while.

"Okay, let's try this," he began, setting the piece down on the bed between them when he finally got the message that she wasn't going to touch it. "Do you remember that old Will Smith movie, '_Men in Black?"_"

Maria stopped breathing. She was watching his lips move, she could hear the words coming out of his mouth, but her brain was reeling and her stomach had taken a nose dive towards the floor. She'd just put 2 and 2 together and gotten . . .

"Nothing," she said aloud, her voice hoarse, her heart pounding.

"Nothing?" he asked, confused. "You don't remember the movie? We used to watch it at least once a month, Maria. You always got a huge kick--"

"Nothing," she repeated, shaking her head now. _Oh, God. _"You were going to leave me with _nothing, _Michael?" She watched his lips tighten as he realized she was on to him. Then her anger kicked in. "You can't be _serious_?" She'd been sitting on the edge of the bed and now she stood, taking a quick step out of his reach. "You've got another friggin' thing coming, buddy, if you think I'm gonna let you—"

_"Maria. . ." _ Michael was shaking his head almost vehemently now. "I'm not . . . I'm not gonna do it." He stared after her for a moment, then lifted the medallion off the sheets, hefting it from one hand to the other. "Oh, and if I _was _. . . you would never have seen it coming. It would have just happened. And you'd never have known something was missing." He tapped the side of his head, indicating where that something would be missing from.

She tried to swallow, found a desert of drifting sand in her throat. "What about Liz?" she managed through the grit, and then knowing what he was going to say, she cut him off before he could answer. "Liz, too, huh?" She swore softly. "Son of a—! Max would do that to her? He would take his love from her like that?" She stopped talking, realization slamming home. "Oh, _God_, Michael! He did it. . . He's done it _already._" She was starting to hyperventilate and she could barely speak. "I . . . I _helped _him do this! I brought him right to her! I . . . I . . ." She slammed her fist into the oak armoire behind her. Then again.

Before she could bloody her hands, which was what she'd been trying for, he'd taken them in his, his touch gentle, stilling her.

"He couldn't do it,_ either_, Maria," he soothed. "He couldn't do it."

"How did you. . ." she trailed off, her face a question.

"I called him while you were downstairs getting the Chinese," he said, guiding her back to the bed, kissing her bruised knuckles when she sat down. His lips were cool against the heated skin. A balm. "He was about to melt the thing into slag, but he couldn't find it. _Liz _had it. She'd figured it out." He kissed her hand again, smiling when he drew away. "You both figured us out. All those years of hiding to survive. You'd think we'd be better at it. . ."

"Ah, but it's easier to fool your enemies than. . ." She trailed off, suddenly afraid to continue. After all this, unsure.

She needn't have been.

". . .than the ones you _love_," he finished for her.

Searching his face, she felt the empty place where her heart had been begin filling with light and expanding. Against this warmth, she was suddenly aware of the room's chill and needing his body, needing to feel his smooth skin against hers, needing to feel that part of her that existed when he touched her. She wrapped her arms around him tightly and drew him so close she could feel his heart beating in his chest. _Beating double-time._

"I love you, Michael," she whispered into his hair. "What happens now?"

Max set the phone on the coffee table, then turned back to Liz. Beneath the fringed cotton blanket draped over her shoulders, he could see her fighting the urge to tremble: shiver, stop; shiver, stop. Reaching through the blanket for her hand, he squeezed it gently in his, hoping his warmth would ease her mind and stop the cycle.

"She's okay," he said, softly, and felt her relax against him. "I . . . I don't know if Michael ever _really_ intended to do it, anyway."

He flashed on an image from earlier that day; Maria amongst the racks of outrageous clothing in her shop, a worn Louisville Slugger in one hand. She may have dropped it when she'd seen him, but he had no doubt she would have used it. He felt a grin crawl onto his face. "Something tells me Michael would have had quite a fight on his hands. . ."

Liz's answering smile was lit with awe and pride. "Maria's tough. She may act like a flake sometimes, but she's a fighter. She's strong."

He kissed Liz's smooth forehead, feeling her shift and remold herself to him. "So are you, Liz."

She'd been through so much, had tortured herself for years, but she was a _survivor_. He could see that now. He'd misunderstood her dreams. Whatever she'd done to herself, whatever she'd taken _from _herself, she'd still survived. She'd found a way, in her own mind, to atone for imagined sins. She was living without joy, but _with _purpose. He admired that. He was living it himself. . .

Somewhere near his heart, Max felt a spark, as though their connection, now quiescent, had come to life again—a deep swelling of warmth and peace and . . . and there was no better word for it—_connection. _It grew until it had filled him to his fingers and toes and when, shivering, he looked over to Liz, he could see her trembling again, her tiny body filling with the same glorious feeling.

They were the _same_. They were two halves of the same perfect whole.

_"Come with me_," he said, his voice breathless, surprising himself with the utterance. Before she could speak, before she could answer, he had slipped his hands behind her pale ears, woven his fingers into her beautiful almond-scented hair and drawn her face to his. He kissed her, softly at first, and then deeper, with his heart as well as his lips. "Tell me you don't feel it," he said. "Tell me you don't feel this and I'll never ask again."

For a moment she looked as though she wanted to answer, but instead, she kissed him, this time with a fervor that almost verged on desperation. When she pulled away, the look of sheer confusion on her face surprised him. She regarded him strangely for another moment, then the blanket slipped from her shoulders and she was on her feet, pacing near the windows.

_"Liz?" _

Max rose to follow her, but she waved him away and stood at the glass, looking down into the darkened street below.

"How do I know, Max," she asked, her exhalation fogging the pane.

"I . . . I don't understand, Liz."

Her breath had highlighted the frosting of ice on the inside of the winter-cold window and he watched as she carefully placed her palm against the glass and held it there until a perfect hand print had been melted into it. There was a faint smile on her face as she turned away from the window.

"How do I know this is real?" she asked, her voice calm and steady.

"Pinch yourself," he said, hoping his own smile would reassure her. "This is _no_ dream. I'm real. _You're _real." He rose to his feet, cut a quick glance over his shoulder to the bedroom. "The things we've done. The love I feel for you. It's _all_ real, Liz."

"That's not what I meant, Max," she said in a whisper, shaking her head. She was fidgeting with the hem of her nightgown and he could see the palm of her hand, still wet from the window.

"Tell me what you're thinking, Liz," he said, at her side. Catching her restless hand in his own, he kissed the frozen palm, warmed it with his breath. "Tell me so I can fix it."

"I'm not sure you can fix this, Max." She gently pulled her hand from his. "How do we know that this—" she waved at some nebulous something in the room. "—isn't all that we get—you and I? One last hurrah before you go off to fulfill the Grand Plan." He winced at the bitterness in her voice. It wasn't a sound he was accustomed to hearing there.

Had her life done this to her? Had the years turned her against her own happiness? Was it guilt or had it just become _easier _to live without hope? He could see it on her face now, as though she were pleading with him to not _let_ her give in—to not let her hope for a thing she'd never believed she could have.

"How do we know we get to _be _happy, Max? Isn't it selfish to think that we _can_? You . . . you still have a war to fight. And me? I have a life here in New York."

"Your life is with _me_, Liz."

The moment he said it, he recognized the arrogance of the conceit. Judging from her shocked expression, she did, too. "No, wait. I . . ." he fumbled for the words. ". . . I just meant that I _want _your life to be with me."

_"Max. . ." _

"Didn't we used to want the same things?" he asked hopefully.

A bitter laugh. "A million _years _ago. . ."

No, this was _not_ happening. Didn't they just get a second chance? Or a third? Could he really let her talk herself out of what he knew, what he could _feel_ she wanted? Was he honestly ready to leave here without her?

That had been the plan six hours ago, anyway; to do a quick rewind on her personal trauma tape, then leave her free to go on without the pain. That was before she'd outsmarted him, yet again. Now the thing he'd never allowed himself to dream, was there for the taking. And she was saying—what, no? Again?

Was _that _their destiny? To get to see and touch it, to _taste _it and then have to leave it behind?

She was walking away from him, yet again—leaving him to fulfill some fate she believed could never include her, one that couldn't exist _with _her? This time, _this time _he had to stop her.

"Tell me you don't love me, Liz." His voice was steady, but his heart was beating a mile a minute.

"Of _course, _I love you." The hint of a smile flitted across her face, then was gone. "But this isn't about love. It's about. . ." She trailed off, but he could hear the word nearly formed on her lips.

_"Say it." _

She hesitated, suddenly seeming frightened of the word. "It's about _destiny_, Max."

"_You're _my destiny, Liz." He'd never been more sure of anything in his life.

She started to speak, and he knew she meant to argue it, so he continued breathlessly. "I used to think that destiny was a lie. . . That it was a joke I played on myself in another life. There came a time, though, when I had no choice but to believe it. I accepted the parts I could handle, discarded the one I couldn't. Would things be different if I hadn't fought it so hard?" He shrugged, felt the pull of an old, familiar guilt. "Would Tess be alive today if I had? Would Alex? Would my _parents_?" He saw the answering compassion in her eyes, immediately sorry he'd manipulated her pity. "No, please. . . That's not why I'm telling you this." He paused for a moment to regroup. "Liz, I . . . I _believe _in destiny. I really do. It isn't always what we think it's going to be, but I believe that everything we _do_, every choice we make, we make for a _reason_. Everything leads us to where we are."

He took her hands now, drew her back to the couch.

"Liz, our lives have lead us _here_. This place. This time. This _reality_."

He caught her eye and for a moment, she seemed ready to concede.

"I want to believe you, Max. I—"

_"Believe me." _

Then the moment was gone. "It's not that simple. . ."

"Yes, it _is_."

"Max, I . . . I don't _want _to believe that in order for me to be happy now, to have you here _now . . . _that I had to go through ten years of believing you were _dead. _That I _made _that happen. That I . . . that I had to _lose _you, to get you back." She laughed bitterly. "Sounds like a sappy dorm room poster I saw once, _'If you love something, set it free. . .'_"

He knew the one. He'd been to college, too.

"Oh, but I _did _come back," he said with a faint smile. "And I _am_ yours."

He could see she was touched, but not amused, so he tried a different tack.

"You want to know if we can make it this time, right?" He watched her nod slowly, eyes locked on his. "If we _get_ the happy ending. The fairy tale thing—_ever after_." A bitter laugh, then he continued. "You want a guarantee, Liz? _No_ one gets that. Why should we be any different?"

He took her hands and held them tightly. "Are you willing to take a chance, Liz?" He searched her eyes for a sign, thought he saw a glimmer just below the surface, took joy from it, went on. "Do you _love _me enough to take a chance on me? On _us_?"

"Of _course_, I do. You _know _I do." She kissed him gently and he could feel the tears starting to slip down her face—a slow, steady tracing towards her chin. "But I don't . . . I don't know what's right anymore."

Max took a deep breath. "So, what are you saying? Do you want me to just . . . _leave_?"

Liz shook her head with a vehemence that was reassuring. _"No."_

"Do want me to stay _here_?"

Again the head shake. "That would be _wrong._ I . . . want that, but it would be wrong."

Liz's voice caught when she spoke and it was then that he noticed she was breathing more heavily, that her cheeks were flushed, her brown eyes wide and glittering.

When he touched her face to brush at the wetness there, he felt a spark at his fingertips and an answering warmth . . . everywhere else.

_Oh . . . oh, God. . . _

Max took a deep breath, realizing that he wouldn't be able to hide what he was . . . feeling from her. Not for long, anyway. He moved closer, no longer wishing to. "Then what _do_ you want, Liz?" Max asked softly, his face so close, his lips brushed against hers when he spoke.

Her breath caught in her throat. "I—I don't . . . know. I don't know anything right now. . ." Her eyes found his, then his lips. The air hummed between them.

There was just the briefest moment of hesitation and then the connection overcame them both, washing over them like a wave on the shore and, powerless, they were swept away with it. . .

_Leaning into him, Liz deepened the kiss, hands traveling down the broad, smooth expanse of his back, pausing at his slim waist, then dipping lower. He seemed surprised by the touch, but only for a moment. With a low, soft sound at the back of his throat, he drew her to him more tightly, lifted her easily off the couch, and carried her, legs around his waist, back into the bedroom. _

_Her lips were at his throat now, moving softly over his Adam's apple, eliciting more sweet sounds from him and making it difficult for him to concentrate on moving through the now darkened room. Most of the candles had burned themselves out during their time away. With a glance and the faintest movement of his head, they re-ignited. In the glow, he found her mouth once again, kissing her gently as he lowered her onto the bed. Trailing a hand down her side, he caught her leg and brought it up and over his back. He held her face as he deepened the kiss, then moved to trace the line of her jaw with his tongue. She moaned and shifted against him. Once. Twice. He seemed to stop for a moment, as if enjoying the feeling. Smiling, he kissed her shoulder and when he reached the neckline of the simple silk nightgown she wore, the corners of his mouth drew up more sharply. He pulled away to watch her eyes as he waved a finger over the nightie—which turned slowly to water and slipped easily over her now bare skin, soaking into the sheets. Her breath caught in her throat and her hands were buried in his hair, urging him on. Down. He bent to catch—_

"Max? Are you watching that _again_?"

He didn't jump. He'd known she'd come into the room. He always knew when she was there.

Liz's tone was playful, but he could feel her embarrassment"A little too Pamela and Tommy Lee for you, huh?"

"That's not it," Liz said, slipping her arms around him from behind and bending to kiss the back of his neck. "What if Isabel walked in? Or Maria?"  
"Alien ships have locks, too, you know." To demonstrate, he waved a hand toward the door, which clicked once—open, then again—locked.

She laughed softly and he felt her breath move his hair; her chin was resting comfortably on the top of his head. "Well, _that's _a relief. Turn it back on, then. . ."

He could feel and see her amusement in his head at the point of contact, it's color tinted by something decidedly more serious: love; commitment; need; wonder. Max reached around behind him, drawing her into his lap. "You're making fun of me," he said, smiling. "I love you, but stop, okay?"

She leaned into him and once again he marveled at the ease, the freedom of it. That she could touch him like that. Whenever she wanted. And she did.

Max shivered.

He still couldn't believe she was here.

"Okay." She was smiling. "I'll humor you a little, but only because I. . ." She blushed. ". . .I kind of like watching it myself. I'm also really glad you had the medallion set to . . . um, record and not _erase_." She cut a glance to the image frozen on the view screen and her blush deepened. "I know the answer should be obvious, but why _do_ you keep watching this?" She shifted in his lap a little. "I'm _here,_" she said meaningfully, glancing out the port behind him, and he knew she was looking at the stars streaking by them; he could see them reflected in the view screen. "I'm not going anywhere, Max."

_May I never get tired of hearing that. . . _

"Good. . . . Don't you want to know why I keep watching this over and over?"

"And over and over," she added, grinning.

He took a deep breath. "I keep watching it to see that one _sweet_ moment—"

"See!" Her eyes flashed playfully. "I told you it was about . . . _that_!"

Resolute, he continued. "—that one sweet moment when you realized the _truth." _

He saw her beautiful mouth form a silent "o" of surprise.

Max nodded to the screen, to the captured image of their love. "It doesn't happen for a little while yet. There's a whole lot of . . . other stuff first."

She nuzzled his neck and he shivered again. "I _remember _that other stuff. . ."

"Do you?" He smiled, kissing her forehead.

Liz nodded, then sat up, her expression sobering. "I remember suddenly realizing that none of the arguments mattered anymore. That you were _right, _Max If our love had survived the death and the distance, the struggles and the pain, that had to _mean _something. Maybe that'swhat destiny _is_." Liz touched his face with a fingertip, as if suddenly needing to reassure herself that he was still there. "I know that's what you were trying to tell me. I just. . ."

"You just had to figure it out on your own," he finished for her, lacing his fingers through hers. "Liz Parker, you always have to consider all of the angles and weigh all of the facts, before you make a decision."

"And you're just a dreamer, Max Evans." She kissed him. "Don't ever change, okay?"

_"I won't if you won't." _

She kissed him again, then nodded to the view screen, settling more comfortably against him.

With a gesture, the frozen image on the screen came to life and, silently, solemnly, they watched for that sweet moment together.

Hours later, Max watched Liz sleeping peacefully, the blush of joy coloring his face.

Once again, he regarded her in wonder and, despite the reality of her very real presence there, a faint disbelief.

To have come this far and struggled for so long, to have fought and sacrificed and known the desolation and fear of defeat, and come out on the other side whole and rewarded and utterly happy. . .

He was repeating himself, _to _himself, but it was still a mystery to him.

After years of living a life he couldn't choose or change, fighting for his people, but denying his own heart, Max Evans had finally seen destiny's plan for what it was—a plan of his own making.

_We make our own destinies. . . _

Larger than even he would have believed at the tender age of 17, the arc of it, the scope of it, ran beyond the realm of concrete, finite events. It allowed for the variations of the heart.

Or perhaps that had been built into the design at the beginning.

Was he not the originator of the plan—ages ago? He could not imagine living, in _any_ time, and not knowing what she was to him. That he and Liz Parker belonged together, he'd never had any doubt. That the Universe now understoodand accepted it, was becoming more clear with each light year they crossed.

And what lay ahead? Max could only guess.

He'd tried to keep his time with Liz separate and pure. No talk of war and enemies, of death and destruction. Much as Liz had tried to be the voice of reason, questioning him on the plans that he, Isabel and Michael had for their return, Max had selfishly steered the conversation out of such intense and unknown waters. There would be plenty of time for strategies and politics later and hadn't they sacrificed enough of their lives to the "cause" to have earned themselves at least a few weeks of blissful, earthly ignorance?

Easier to do when they were earthbound. Not so easy now that Earth was millions of light years behind them. . .

Had they complicated the struggle ahead by bringing Liz and Maria with them? Both had seemed eager to brave the unknown; to make this war their own. Max refused to believe it had been a foolish decision, and Michael, after years of solitude and struggle, was unwilling to live another day with regret; he was unwilling to live without _Maria. _

Max marveled that he and Michael, after years of disagreeing about nearly everything, had arrived at the same place. Life. Love. One did not work without the other. Not _really_.

Slipping the medallion from the viewer, Max hefted it in his hand. With a finger, he traced the symbol etched in the metal; two hands with a disk clasped between them. He felt himself smiling in amusement at the simplistic "directions" his people had placed there, like the symbol on the orb, though they hadn't seen that symbol for what it was at the time. Such simplicity belied the power this intricate device held. He and Michael had almost robbed Liz and Maria of their memories—more than a decade of their lives.

Though, in the end, he'd realized how wrong it would have been, he could just as easily have gone through with it and he was grateful for this second chance.

It might have been selfish, but neither he nor Michael wanted to face the future alone.

As for Isabel, she had long ago made her peace with Alex's passing and it somehow prepared her to lose Eddie to his work on the reservation. Through his influence, she had found the focus and the serenity to await planetfall with an eager heart, despite the uncertainty they all felt about what they would find on their arrival.

None of them had any idea what lay ahead, but they would face it together.

_They were stronger together. _

_How long have I been sleeping  
How long have I been drifting alone through the night  
How long have I been running for that morning flight  
Through the whispered promises and the changing light  
Of the bed where we both lie  
Late for the sky _

— Jackson Browne, _Late for the Sky, _1974 SWALLOW TURN MUSIC


End file.
